“Let’s imagine an enterprising and creative chef of tomorrow… he does his research and reads old text books that detail the historical animal known as the cow. He becomes excited by the false color illustrations of their anatomy. He selects the parts he finds most interesting. Not the boring bits we eat today, but the more intricate shapes found in the abdomen and the brain. From these patterns, he constructs a mold into which he cultures his cells and serves the result to an appreciative clientele.”

Appreciative, indeed. Studies show that when it comes to food, presentation is everything. In a recent experiment, 57 participants were asked to sip hot chocolate from different-colored vessels: orange, cream, red and white. Time and again, the cocoa served from the orange cup was the clear winner in terms of favored taste. “The color had nothing to do with this difference, neither physically nor chemically, but apparently the drinkers’ brains thought they detected a difference,” notes Spanish researcher Betina Piqueras-Fiszman.

The same study also reported more obvious relationships between food and perception, like the idea that yellow packaging enhances lemon flavoring, or blue drinks appear to quench thirst more than red ones. There’s a physiological reason for this, of course. Writer Amy Castle explains:

“Your brain is programmed to choose foods that will give your body the greatest nutrients. To get a balanced diet, you need a mixture of foods that are different colors – dairy is generally pale and white, vegetables and fruits a mixture of bright yellows, greens and red, meats often a rich brown. Your subconscious knows this, which is why you pause over the fruit bowl to pick an item you find visually appealing.”

And with the controversial (and admittedly unappetizing) subject that is synthetic meat, “visually appealing” could mean life or death for the cultured meat industry. Writes King, “My intention was to design a piece of in vitro meat that was made with craft rather than mass produced homogeneity and, depending on your taste, appeared just palatable enough to eat.”

I once had a Thai cousin whom my family once brought to a vegetarian restaurant (because I was a rebellious teen and was in my vegetarian phase). It was an asian restaurant (chinese I believe), and one of the dishes we ordered was a mock fried fish. It was vegetarian, but did look like a whole fried fish.

This cousin of mine, being young (about 6 – 7 at that time) and new to the country, was told it was proper fish, and lo and behold, midway through the meal, he had found ‘bones’ in his meal.

Moral of the story? Appearances DO matter, even with mock food. I am genuinely excited about the synthetic meat. I think it’ll do humanity a great lot of good.

Wow, I really had never heard of synthetic meat. it seems kinda weird but I know this creation will be very popular! I definitely agree with the fact that appearances do affect (a lot) in what we choose to eat. The bowl of fruit example was spot on. I think synthetic meat will be very good for vegetarians that for instance do not eat it because they think it-s cruel to kill an animal or maybe even for people that cannot process some aminoacids and proteins!